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Day: June 21, 2022

Delta Live Tables and Power BI Data Modeling

Published 2022-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Tahir Fayyaz goes from Delta Lake to Power BI:

To get the optimal performance from Power BI it is recommended to use a star schema data model and to make use of user-defined aggregated tables. However, as you build out your facts, dimensions, and aggregation tables and views in Delta Lake, ready to be used by the Power BI data model, it can become complicated to manage all the pipelines, dependencies, and data quality as you need to consider the following:

– How to easily develop and manage the data model’s transformation code.

– How to run and scale data pipelines for the model as data volumes grow.

– How to keep all the Delta Lake tables updated as new data arrives.

– How to view the lineage for all tables as the model gets more complex.

– How to actively stop data quality issues that result in incorrect reports.

Read on for recommendations, a couple architectural diagrams, and some sample code.

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The top Operator in KQL

Published 2022-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Cain has top men working on this. Top. Men:

Top 10 lists are all the rage on the internet. Everywhere you look you see “Top 10 Cute Kitten Videos” or “Top 10 Pluralsight Videos by ArcaneCode”.

KQL includes a top operator so you can generate your own top lists. Even better, you are not limited to just ten items either.

Read on to see how you can use the top operator in KQL.

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Constructing JSON Objects in SQL Server

Published 2022-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Hasan Savran checks out a couple of functions new to SQL Server 2022:

JSON Functions are introduced to SQL Server in version 2016. Saving JSON documents and retrieving documents using JSON Functions brings many possibilities to SQL Server. It is great to see that Microsoft continues to add different functions to the original JSON functions set.

    Today, I will explain two new JSON functions which are available in SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Database. 

Read on to learn more about these functions.

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Creating a Self-Signed Certificate in Powershell

Published 2022-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Tom Collins says ‘trust me’:

Use the Powershell cmdlet New-SelfSignedCertificate

Warning: I only ever use this method for testing purposes – never use for Production environments. A typical test would be for  SQL Server Network Encryption SSL Certificate Management

Encryption strategy  should be part of a wider review of Database Security Countermeasures against hacker attacks

For more details check the Microsoft documentation but here are some notes on some of the parameters  attached to the Powershell cmdlet – New-SelfSignedCertificate.

Read on to see how you can create the certificate and use it in SQL Server. Connections will complain (and rightfully so) about the self-signed certificate but you’ll be able to try functionality which requires a certificate in an environment in which you don’t have one available for whatever reason.

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Making DAX’s SWITCH Run Fastest

Published 2022-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari explain when SWITCH is fast and when it’s not so fast:

The SWITCH function in DAX is widely used to define different execution paths depending on the condition of an expression. A very common case is when we want to check the state of a slicer, so that the selection made by the report user directly affects the result of a DAX formula.

Read on for three separate cases and how they can affect the performance of the SWITCH function.

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